Gibson, 58, has combined an old-school mindset with new-school technology to develop an approach that some of his colleagues just couldn’t do.

Gibson is one of the few crew chiefs—along with Jimmy Fennig and Steve Addington—among old-generation racers who have been able to continue as crew chiefs despite rapidly changing technology and the new engineering focus on the cars.

It has made him possibly the perfect match for rookie driver Danica Patrick as she starts her first full Sprint Cup season at Stewart-Haas Racing. His knowledge and laid-back approach has few surprised that he has found success with her right away by winning the pole for the Daytona 500.

“The guys like us that are still in it, we realize and we’re willing to adjust to where the racing has gone,” Gibson said. “Yes, it has gone to more engineering. We’re the ones that are willing to adapt and see the writing on the wall.”

They are the ones, too, that have years and years of racing experience that computers don’t have in their database.

“You have to have that racer experience, that old redneck racing experience because at the end of the day, a lot of engineers that are really smart, they don’t have the experience,” Gibson said.

“They’ve never seen some of the things that can happen. And when panic strikes, you have to have a guy with experience that knows how to calm everybody down and get you through that bad spot.”

Gibson has that experience. He won Cup championships as a car chief for Alan Kulwicki in 1992 and Jeff Gordon in 2001.

He first became a crew chief in 2003 at Dale Earnhardt Inc. with driver Steve Park and worked on and off as a crew chief at DEI throughout the next six seasons.

At one point in 2007, he was thrust into the crew chief role for Earnhardt Jr. when Tony Eury Jr. was suspended.

So being the crew chief for Patrick shouldn’t be much different in terms of pressure and expectations.

“It’s another driver,” Gibson said. “It’s no different than being thrown into crew chiefing for Dale Jr. when Tony Jr. got suspended.

“I went from car chief one day to crew chiefing Dale Jr. How big is that?”

Gibson said he has treated all of his drivers the same, from Martin to Earnhardt to Elliott to young drivers like Aric Almirola and Patrick.

“I understand a lot of that pressure comes with a high-profile driver like Danica and Dale Jr., but at the end of the day you have to stay focused, let her PR people handle that side of it and I just need to stay calm and do my deal and everything will work out,” Gibson said.

Gibson’s ability to stay calm is key with a rookie such as Patrick.

“Tony makes it fun,” team co-owner Tony Stewart said. “He’s good at doing the work that needs to be done, but he’s got a great personality. … He’s a guy that enjoys the racing. He works hard at it, but at the same time he makes it fun.”

But it’s more than that, according to Fox Sports analyst Larry McReynolds, a former Cup crew chief.

McReynolds said it’s Gibson’s open-minded approach that could lead to success with Patrick. When Gibson became Patrick’s crew chief for the final two races of her 10-race Cup schedule last year, she showed immediate progress.

“When Tony went in there, he didn’t treat her like a rookie,” McReynolds said. “He treated her like a racecar driver and he listened to her feedback and he worked on the car based on her feedback.”

McReynolds and Andy Petree, another former crew chief who performs similar duties at ESPN, both talk to Gibson often. They talk to him possibly more than other crew chiefs for a simple reason—they can always find Gibson by his car.

That’s not the M.O. of crew chiefs who are more engineering based.

“There’s some crew chiefs, some that are successful, you can’t never find them,” McReynolds said. “They’re hibernated in the lounge of the hauler. Tony, he’s out there with his guys, he’s out there with his racecar.”

Gibson said there’s a simple reason for that. Tony Eury Sr. always told him that if he ever got to a point where he can’t work on the car or understand his racecar, he’d fail.

“I’d be honest with you, dude, if I went back to car chiefing, I would be OK with that because I love working on racecars,” Gibson said.

“If it ever comes to where I can’t touch a racecar and work on it, then I don’t want to do it.”

But Gibson loves the leadership required of a crew chief and the challenge of keeping a team motivated and working together amid the challenges of racing weekly.

And, most importantly, he hasn’t fought his engineers, at least not too much, along the way.

“There’s things that I just don’t understand,” Gibson said about the engineering side. “There’s theories and there’s ways of going about looking at the geometry on these racecars (that) I’m not used to looking at.

“I rely on my engineers, I have to calm them down sometimes, ‘Slow down right here and let’s put this in layman’s terms. I need to understand how am I getting from A to B here and just slow down.’”

Gibson said there also are times when he has to use his experience to tell engineers that something simply won’t work.

He has learned to adjust to the way the cars are built, just like he has adjusted to the changes in the NASCAR schedule and the growth from a regional sport to a national sport with increased pressure and spotlight.

“I live in a 2,600-square-foot house in Mount Pleasant, N.C., and my house payment is $1,200 a month,” Gibson said. “I’m happy. I have no problem with that.

“I have three beagles. I love to camp. I love to take my camper and go camping. I like to go four-wheeling, I like to go hunting and fishing. I don’t have a need to live on a lake and a million-dollar home.”

Patrick says she likes Gibson’s old-school, “redneck” style.

“I asked my dad why I seem to get along better with the straightforward ‘redneck’ style guys, and it’s because they don’t over think things,” she said. “They are just seat-of-the-pants kind of guys. I really enjoy the less engineering side of things.”

Gibson is still the same guy he was 20 years ago, when he was doing the jobs that many of his crew members are doing now.

He can relate to them because he has done their jobs. And that might be his biggest strength. He is an old-school racer with a fierce competitiveness that has a strong belief in his team and driver.

“He's a great people motivator,” Petree said. “I think he's got a lot of confidence in Danica's ability. He's had a lot of experience with different drivers, and I think he's got a lot to bring to the table.

“He's very good technically and just has a way of getting a car right, and I think he'll do a really good job for Danica.”